Covid-19: Delta threatens Dragon as half of China sees restrictions
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: As the highly infectious Delta variant of SARS-Cov-2 spread to 135 countries, it has reached half of China, including the capital Beijing, forcing the government to re-impose restrictions and speed up vaccination and testing of all 12 million people of the pandemic’s epicenter, Wuhan.
In the last week, more than 500 cases of infections have been reported at different places across the People’s Republic of China (PRC), prompting the government to impose new restrictions across half of the country on travel in a bid to slow a Delta-driven outbreak, media reported on Thursday.
The virus resurgence is currently slow but the government is not taking any chances. That is why public transport and taxi services were curtailed in 144 of the worst-hit areas nationwide, while officials curbed train service and subway usage in Beijing, where three new cases surfaced on Wednesday. Hong Kong also re-imposed quarantine on travelers from mainland China, although the southern Guangdong province, bordering the world’s fifth-largest financial hub, was exempted.
Although over 60 percent of the Chinese population has been reported vaccinated, one of the highest rates among the biggest countries, the PRC has continued with mass testing and targeted lockdowns that had contained over 30 previous flare-ups of the virus.
Beijing has banned community spaces for entertainment, limited the number of visitors at parks, and implemented a two-week quarantine for visitors from high-risk areas.
Since the Chinese vaccine-makers have not released data from broad-based studies on how well their shots perform against the Delta strain, other experts say their effectiveness, already lower than the western messenger RNA vaccines, could be even less potent against the highly infectious variant.
In just two weeks, confirmed Delta cases have shot up to more than 500. These can be traced back to three clusters in China: an outbreak among airport cleaning staff in the eastern city of Nanjing, another at a hospital treating Covid patients in Zhengzhou, and sporadic cases detected in Yunnan, the province bordering Myanmar.
Delta has spread to Wuhan, which remained virus-free since China contained the initial outbreak there early in 2020. The city detected 12 cases as of August 3 and is currently testing its entire population of 12 million people.
Chinese authorities also urged people to cancel business trips and vacations, while some colleges around the country have asked students, especially those from high-risk areas, to delay their return to school for the new semester.
